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Spam

Each day, close to a half million email messages are sent to users on the KU Lawrence campus. Many of these are unwanted messages, generically referred to as spam or junk email. Spam is not only annoying, but is also a drain on your time and our campus technology resources.

What is KU Doing to Manage Spam?

KU IT uses an anti-spam filtering application to protect you from unwanted e-mail. This system blocks unwanted email before it even reaches your mailbox, reducing the time that you spend dealing with spam and decreasing unwanted traffic on our campus network. For example, KU IT’s malware and spam blocking efforts saved an estimated 18,504 hours of staff time from Oct. 2014 through June 2015. Messages that might be spam but cannot be positively identified as spam by the system will be delivered to your Junk email folder. You have the ability to decide if you want to block, or allow, these messages from a particular sender.

Junk Email Preferences

Emails that are definitely spam are deleted before they get to our campus. Messages that fall into the potential spam category are delivered to your Junk email folder. We recommend that you periodically review this folder to check for any legitimate messages that may have been incorrectly classified as spam. If you find a message that is not spam, you can drag it back to your Inbox or to any folder. You can also mark the item as "not junk" by doing the following:

Outlook 2013 - On the Home tab, in the Delete group, click Junk, and then click Not Junk.

OWA - Right-click the message that you want to mark as "not junk." On the shortcut menu, point to Junk E-mail, and then click Mark as Not Junk.

NOTE:
• All names and addresses in the KU global address list (GAL) are automatically considered safe.
• Items in the Junk email folder are automatically deleted after 30 days.

Phishing

Some spam messages are dangerous because they contain viruses, or attempt to get the recipient to reveal personal, private or financial information, such as user names, passwords and credit card numbers. This type of spam is called phishing. For more information, visit Don't Fall For Phishing.

Report Phishing Attempts

If you receive suspicious email or text messages that you believe are targeting KU, forward them to abuse@ku.edu, and KU's Information Technology Security Office will investigate.